The investigators are now working out a list of different chemicals that were brought in the lab, which was renovated, and handed over to the scientists the same day the accident happened.
The government today dismissed speculation about Pakistani-American David Headley, arrested for plotting terror attacks in India, being behind the fire at a laboratory in Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai that killed two scientists.
When told that people were linking Headley's taking pictures of BARC to the fire in BARC's chemical lab last week and radioactive poisoning of employees of Kaiga nuclear power plant in Kaiga, Karnataka, science minister Prithivraj Chavan said, "No, I think it will be stretching the imagination too far – first to link the two incidents and also to bring extraneous element. I don't accept this at all."
Chavan, who is also a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, said investigations were on into the two incidents. We know what exactly happened in Kaiga but who did it is still unknown... In BARC fire incident, we will soon have some answers."
In Trivandrum, Department of Atomic Energy secretary Srikumar Banerjee also ruled out the possibility of an external hand in the fire at the BARC lab.
"Now people are saying this external hand thing, but there is no scientific answer to it. We do not see anything," Banerjee said on the sidelines of the 97th Indian Science Congress.
Banerjee said the place where fire had broken out was a basic research facility on anti-oxidants, and did not have any chemicals that could pose a fire hazard.
"It would have been obvious and easy to point out if you have a gas cylinders or a hydrogen cylinder. But it was not there. The lab did not have anything that could be said to be a fire hazard," Banerjee said.
The investigators are now working out a list of different chemicals that were brought in the lab, which was renovated, and handed over to the scientists the same day the accident happened, said Banerjee, who is also the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.
"We are also looking at the possibility of vapour accummulation. The problem is that everything was charred, and there is not much trace of anything left," he said.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}